6 ms·

All of these "economic damage" studies have to be taken with a big grain salt due to the partial equilibrium nature of the analysis. Take a simple example: Loo

by rsj_hn 6y ago

All of these "economic damage" studies have to be taken with a big grain salt due to the partial equilibrium nature of the analysis. Take a simple example: Look at how many times waiters get sick with the flu, say a million hours per year, and then multiply by the average amount of money a waiter earns - say 20 bucks an hour -- and conclude that the flu costs the restaurant economy 20 million dollars. Well that assumes that if the waiters didn't call in sick, that an extra 20 million dollars of tips/earnings would have been available. Yet that amount is determined by the demand for meals, not availability of waiters, and when one waiter is sick, others cover for them so all the meals get served. But then the extra labor of waiters needed to cover for each other is a cost, no? Well, again no, as collectively the pool of waiters that cover for sick waiters is the same pool that call in sick -- it is some extra volatility in hours worked, but total hours worked is unchanged. So at the end of the day, it's hard to determine how much damage to the economy is created by waiters calling in sick and covering for each other. It's certainly much, much lower than what you get by multiplying hourly wages by time spent sick. Now come to depression. Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought. Like sleep is not a dead weight cost, but just the price of having a developed brain. It's not clear that Depression is "costing" us anything anymore than sleep is costing us lost labor, and it could be that a world without depression would also be a world without genius, realism, and creativity.

witherk 6y ago
>Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought. There are plenty of very smart people who aren't depressed, but I don't know of any smart people who don't sleep.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Agree. Speaking from experience depression is a miserable state. There is no reason to create silly rationales to justify it. Depression is at worst a lethal malady that creates suffering not only in the depressed but for their families as well.
  - gustavo-fring 6y ago
    I disagree. Depression appeared in humans for a reason. It is possible that one of the results of it, and the reason it sticks around is because there is value to it, even if it is exceedingly painful. Regardless, having a reason to endure, even if incorrect, has value in and of itself, even if you don't see it.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      Naturalistic fallacy. Plenty of things appeared in humans for no positive reason. Its not like smallpox was valuable it some point. Its possible that depression has some positive function, but its just as possible it does not.
      - gustavo-fring 6y ago
        I didn't say it was a good reason.
        3grdlurker 6y ago
        But what else could it be? You can’t just say that something has an evolutionary cause without also implying that the trait is for the purpose of survivability, which we associate with the notion of “good”.
        gustavo-fring 6y ago
        Cancer has an evolutionary cause, that doesn't mean we associate it with good.
        sturza 6y ago
        I actually am interested of understand more of where this statement comes from.
        bawolff 6y ago
dcolkitt 6y ago
> It's not clear that Depression is "costing" us anything anymore than sleep is costing us lost labor, and it could be that a world without depression would also be a world without genius, realism, and creativity. This might just be a semantic quibble, but I don't think the term "costing" necessarily implies that the burden has no use. For example, I might say something like "the garbage collector is costing us 20% of the clock cycles". That doesn't mean that I think we can just shut off the garbage collector off. It just as an attempt to account for how much its spending critical resources.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  I don't think it is "quibble". These articles pull out these massive values for shocking headlines about how some minor delay or incident is costing millions per second like its some debt which at the end we will have to pay back when the reality is that things are as efficient and profitable as they have ever been in history and these incidents didn't "cost" anything they just represent the failure to achieve the most optimal result which has never been achived before.
  - tremon 6y ago
    The reason for that is fairly straightforward: if something doesn't have an explicit economic cost (whether it's about ecosystems, cultural heritage, climate change, or mental health), the policy-making part of society tends to ignore it.
gustavo-fring 6y ago
https://www.amazon.com/First-Rate-Madness-Uncovering-Between-Leadership/dp/0143121332 https://www.amazon.com/First-Rate-Madness-Uncovering-Between... Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.
- bemmu 6y ago
  Link didn’t work, but seems the book is “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness“
  - gustavo-fring 6y ago
    Thank you. I fixed it, but that is the book.
- solveit 6y ago
  > From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain I find these comparisons deeply suspicious. If there indeed were a strong link between leadership ability and mental illness, there cannot be a very big difference between Lincoln and Chamberlain for the reason that both men were surely at the very tails of the relevant distributions. One does not become a British Prime minister by being average. I fully expect the book to be full of cherry-picked data supporting narratives built largely on popular stereotypes about successful and unsuccessful leaders of dubious accuracy.
  - gustavo-fring 6y ago
bawolff 6y ago
> Well, again no, as collectively the pool of waiters that cover for sick waiters is the same pool that call in sick -- it is some extra volatility in hours worked, But if waiters called in sick less would there be less waiters, and some of the waiters would instead be doing something else productive? > Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought Isn't inability to accurately asses situations objectively and difficulty focusing both symptoms of depression? That seems the opposite of risk assesment/deep thought.
- nickff 6y ago
  Well it’s likely those ‘freed’ people would be doing things that were less productive in the short term, though it’s likely the change would have positive long-term effects.
- caddemon 6y ago
  Negativity bias is associated with depression, but healthy people display positivity bias. Someone with severe depression is probably not accurately assessing risks, but it's plausible to me that mild/moderate depression patients may make more accurate evaluations in certain situations. My understanding is there is still debate in psychology about these topics, as different types of studies have found different results. This review is kinda old, but written by the psychiatrist behind CBT, so it's probably worth a read if anyone is interested in an intro to the topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005796794E0016C# https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000579...!
  - bawolff 6y ago
    I remember that was also the plot of the movie melancholia. It does seem potentially plausible. Plenty of other traits exist that are terrible in normal times but key to survive abnormal times.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Negativity bias is associated with depression, but healthy people display positivity bias. That is because people who make accurate risk analysis and talk about it get punished. So you learn to shut up about negatives.
dmos62 6y ago
> Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought. Well that's macabre. I really don't think that grinding to an emotional halt is a natural consequence of attentiveness. It's the opposite, if anything.
Rastonbury 6y ago
It depends how you define "the economy" if you the think of only restaurant revenues (using the example), only then would it seem there is no impact to the resturant economy. However, there are other measures of how we define the economy, eg. expenditure or income measurement derived GDP. Compare two economies one without flu (or depression) and one that has the flu. The economic output of the former would be higher than the latter, using those methods due to lost output or income. Waiters can cover for each other, what about those working full time? Ceteris paribus, a rise in depression that leads to the inability to work which will reduce the the size of the labour force and consequently output. Your last point on it being the "cost of genius" is pure conjecture. A rise in depression (tripling according to the article) has definite costs in terms of the economy (tangible) and human well-being (the intangible). It is in public interest to reduce the incidence of depression.
mewpmewp2 6y ago
As someone who had depression for quite a while and basically wasted 5+ years of his life due to that, at least from my own experience I can definitely say that there would have been ways to prevent this depression which could've given me 5 productive years back. During this time I wasn't working or doing anything productive.

by rsj_hn 6y ago

witherk 6y ago

>Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought. There are plenty of very smart people who aren't depressed, but I don't know of any smart people who don't sleep.

fsloth 6y ago
Agree. Speaking from experience depression is a miserable state. There is no reason to create silly rationales to justify it. Depression is at worst a lethal malady that creates suffering not only in the depressed but for their families as well.
- gustavo-fring 6y ago
  I disagree. Depression appeared in humans for a reason. It is possible that one of the results of it, and the reason it sticks around is because there is value to it, even if it is exceedingly painful. Regardless, having a reason to endure, even if incorrect, has value in and of itself, even if you don't see it.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Naturalistic fallacy. Plenty of things appeared in humans for no positive reason. Its not like smallpox was valuable it some point. Its possible that depression has some positive function, but its just as possible it does not.
    - gustavo-fring 6y ago
      I didn't say it was a good reason.
      - 3grdlurker 6y ago
        But what else could it be? You can’t just say that something has an evolutionary cause without also implying that the trait is for the purpose of survivability, which we associate with the notion of “good”.
        gustavo-fring 6y ago
        Cancer has an evolutionary cause, that doesn't mean we associate it with good.
        sturza 6y ago
        I actually am interested of understand more of where this statement comes from.
      - bawolff 6y ago

dcolkitt 6y ago

> It's not clear that Depression is "costing" us anything anymore than sleep is costing us lost labor, and it could be that a world without depression would also be a world without genius, realism, and creativity. This might just be a semantic quibble, but I don't think the term "costing" necessarily implies that the burden has no use. For example, I might say something like "the garbage collector is costing us 20% of the clock cycles". That doesn't mean that I think we can just shut off the garbage collector off. It just as an attempt to account for how much its spending critical resources.

SilverRed 6y ago
I don't think it is "quibble". These articles pull out these massive values for shocking headlines about how some minor delay or incident is costing millions per second like its some debt which at the end we will have to pay back when the reality is that things are as efficient and profitable as they have ever been in history and these incidents didn't "cost" anything they just represent the failure to achieve the most optimal result which has never been achived before.
- tremon 6y ago
  The reason for that is fairly straightforward: if something doesn't have an explicit economic cost (whether it's about ecosystems, cultural heritage, climate change, or mental health), the policy-making part of society tends to ignore it.

gustavo-fring 6y ago

https://www.amazon.com/First-Rate-Madness-Uncovering-Between-Leadership/dp/0143121332 https://www.amazon.com/First-Rate-Madness-Uncovering-Between... Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

bemmu 6y ago
Link didn’t work, but seems the book is “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness“
- gustavo-fring 6y ago
  Thank you. I fixed it, but that is the book.
solveit 6y ago
> From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain I find these comparisons deeply suspicious. If there indeed were a strong link between leadership ability and mental illness, there cannot be a very big difference between Lincoln and Chamberlain for the reason that both men were surely at the very tails of the relevant distributions. One does not become a British Prime minister by being average. I fully expect the book to be full of cherry-picked data supporting narratives built largely on popular stereotypes about successful and unsuccessful leaders of dubious accuracy.
- gustavo-fring 6y ago

bawolff 6y ago

> Well, again no, as collectively the pool of waiters that cover for sick waiters is the same pool that call in sick -- it is some extra volatility in hours worked, But if waiters called in sick less would there be less waiters, and some of the waiters would instead be doing something else productive? > Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought Isn't inability to accurately asses situations objectively and difficulty focusing both symptoms of depression? That seems the opposite of risk assesment/deep thought.

nickff 6y ago
Well it’s likely those ‘freed’ people would be doing things that were less productive in the short term, though it’s likely the change would have positive long-term effects.
caddemon 6y ago
Negativity bias is associated with depression, but healthy people display positivity bias. Someone with severe depression is probably not accurately assessing risks, but it's plausible to me that mild/moderate depression patients may make more accurate evaluations in certain situations. My understanding is there is still debate in psychology about these topics, as different types of studies have found different results. This review is kinda old, but written by the psychiatrist behind CBT, so it's probably worth a read if anyone is interested in an intro to the topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005796794E0016C# https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000579...!
- bawolff 6y ago
  I remember that was also the plot of the movie melancholia. It does seem potentially plausible. Plenty of other traits exist that are terrible in normal times but key to survive abnormal times.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Negativity bias is associated with depression, but healthy people display positivity bias. That is because people who make accurate risk analysis and talk about it get punished. So you learn to shut up about negatives.

dmos62 6y ago

> Depression may be just the mental price of brains capable of risk assessment or deep thought. Well that's macabre. I really don't think that grinding to an emotional halt is a natural consequence of attentiveness. It's the opposite, if anything.

Rastonbury 6y ago

It depends how you define "the economy" if you the think of only restaurant revenues (using the example), only then would it seem there is no impact to the resturant economy. However, there are other measures of how we define the economy, eg. expenditure or income measurement derived GDP. Compare two economies one without flu (or depression) and one that has the flu. The economic output of the former would be higher than the latter, using those methods due to lost output or income. Waiters can cover for each other, what about those working full time? Ceteris paribus, a rise in depression that leads to the inability to work which will reduce the the size of the labour force and consequently output. Your last point on it being the "cost of genius" is pure conjecture. A rise in depression (tripling according to the article) has definite costs in terms of the economy (tangible) and human well-being (the intangible). It is in public interest to reduce the incidence of depression.

mewpmewp2 6y ago

As someone who had depression for quite a while and basically wasted 5+ years of his life due to that, at least from my own experience I can definitely say that there would have been ways to prevent this depression which could've given me 5 productive years back. During this time I wasn't working or doing anything productive.